Ch.115Church Training (3)

The saw dripping with blood slices through the enemies.

Men with torn arms and gouged thighs scream and tumble to the ground.

“AAAAARGH!”

A man whose face was caught in the saw blade shrieked, clutching his half-disappeared face.

Toward a man reaching the basement entrance, Frider threw a chain axe with all her might.

The axe, shot like lightning, lodged into the man’s back.

The man with his spine shattered crumples forward.

The iron chain unfurls with a clatter following the axe.

As Frider grabs the chain, her body is yanked toward the axe.

With that momentum, she leaps and lands at the basement entrance in an instant.

The men rushing toward the entrance stop in surprise.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Frider sneers coldly as she steps on the man writhing on the floor and pulls the axe from his back.

Bloody bone fragments and nerve bundles cling wetly to the axe blade.

“There’s a knight here too!!”

“D-damn it…!”

The hesitating men glance behind them.

There was nowhere to escape.

A greatsword whirling like a vortex was approaching, harvesting people’s legs.

They gritted their teeth and raised their weapons.

It seemed they thought Frider, who appeared to be just a slender woman, would be easier to deal with than the knight who was dismembering people with a greatsword and had instantly killed Erik.

Their experience of only violating women who couldn’t resist had likely led to such a stereotype.

“UAAAAH!”

A scream-like battle cry forced out. Trembling spears and swords pointed at Frider.

Frider, raising her saw and axe, welcomed the trash with a cold smile.

—-

Dismembered limbs fly up like marbles.

Silver hair dances in the air.

The black coat tails flutter behind.

The saw with bared teeth cuts through flesh like paper and digs into bones, severing them.

The descending axe crushes shoulders.

With each swing of Frider’s arms, men’s limbs bid farewell to their torsos.

The men’s weapons couldn’t even graze her clothes.

Easily avoiding the swinging spears and swords, Frider cut the men into pieces.

Across from her, Demian was still advancing, creating a red vortex.

Demian didn’t even dodge the men’s weapons.

When he swung his greatsword to parry, they all shattered like reeds.

Terrible screams fill the chapel.

A dagger thrown at the spine of a man trying to escape through a broken window hits its mark.

The man collapses, his legs giving out.

A middle-aged man trembling in the corner is dragged out by his collar,

squealing like a pig.

Frider’s saw blade bares its teeth toward the middle-aged man’s legs.

He screamed like a pig being castrated.

A reckless young man who tried to block the greatsword with a shield is slammed against the wall with shattered wooden pieces and goes limp.

Frider’s boot crushes the arm of an old man trying to crawl away.

The withered arm, like an old tree, was crushed.

After three more kicks, the old man could no longer crawl.

No one could resist.

Dark red paint spurts like a fountain, repainting the walls of the old chapel.

The accumulated dust was washed away.

The goddess Ceres would be pleased too.

A feast in her chapel after decades.

Such abundant offerings after so long.

A few minutes later.

In the red chapel filled with screams and groans,

only two people remained standing.

Men with life still clinging to them twitched, streaming tears and blood.

Frider brushed back her blood-soaked hair.

Clumps of sticky blood poured down.

“It’ll be a chore to wash this out.”

That was Frider’s only comment.

For her, it was just an unremarkable slaughter.

“There was a well in the village, so we can wash with that.”

“I wonder if there’s any water left in the well.”

Frider muttered skeptically.

With the entire village burning away, it wouldn’t be strange if the well had dried up.

“Let’s hope there is. Shall we go down then?”

Demian swung his greatsword to shake off the blood.

The congealed blood and fat splattered onto the men’s bodies.

The dark blade, without a single nick, revealed itself again.

Demian looked down at his greatsword with satisfied eyes.

The performance of the new weapon was excellent. Enough to impress him.

“Go down… I suppose we should?”

Frider hesitated for a moment.

‘Is it right to take Demian down there…?’

It was a natural concern for Frider. She could roughly imagine what the basement would look like.

It wouldn’t be good for Demian’s mental state, and she couldn’t predict how the women down there would react to him.

‘No, I should go down alone.’

Having made her decision, Frider turned to Demian. She had just thought of something to task him with.

Demian blinked calmly as if asking what was the matter.

“Demian, you stay here and watch these guys. I’ll go down and bring the women up.”

“Watch…?”

Demian looked around the chapel floor with a slightly questioning look.

Rather than watching, they seemed to need nursing care.

If they could escape in that state, their tenacity would deserve applause.

Frider nodded and threw a vial of healing potion to Demian.

“Yes, watch. Keep them just alive enough with this. Then wait with Haschal and Millia when they arrive.”

Frider’s intention was firm.

As there was no particular reason to object, Demian eventually nodded.

Frider headed to the basement.

—-

The air in the basement was stale and damp. As always.

It would have been dark too, if not for the candles lining the walls.

Frider took out a handkerchief and covered her nose and mouth as she descended the stairs.

She already guessed the source of this rotten fishy smell. She didn’t want to smell it at all.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, the basement came into view.

A typical underground space dug out and lined with whitewashed bricks, with pillars in between.

Along the long central corridor, three wooden doors with bolts were arranged on both sides.

The open space at the end of the corridor seemed to be used as a lounge.

The wooden table was full of bottles of alcohol, and the surrounding chairs were scattered on the floor.

Frider stepped into the corridor.

If she listened carefully, she could hear women’s voices.

Desperate crying, voices cursing through gritted teeth, drugged moans.

Even mumbling that wasn’t human language.

Frider sighed and walked toward the doors.

‘There were three rooms, right.’

Education room, breeding pen, playroom.

The simple naming starkly revealed their vulgar purposes.

The largest room was probably the breeding pen.

Frider opened the first door.

A strong smell hit her, noticeable even through the cloth covering her nose and mouth.

“Eeeek!”

One of the captives let out a shrill scream in surprise.

It was understandable. A woman drenched in blood had suddenly opened the door and walked in.

Scanning the room, Frider immediately understood its purpose.

‘The education room.’

A space divided by bars running across the entire room.

Outside the bars were all sorts of perverted torture devices.

With clear signs of recent use.

Inside the cage, eight women were imprisoned.

Their wrists were bound with chains fixed to the wall.

Their ages varied. Four young women, two who appeared to be over thirty.

And two children… about Millia’s age.

Their exposed skin was covered with disgusting marks and wounds.

There were scars on their wrists and ankles where tendons had been cut.

Those trash probably didn’t know what they were doing, but it was effective.

The wounds, long since healed, would be difficult to recover from even with a priest’s healing.

The children and three women showed no reaction, only emitting faint moans, their minds seemingly gone.

Another woman was giggling, high on drugs.

In other words, only two of them still had their minds intact.

A gaunt woman with sunken eye sockets and cheeks that made her look fierce, and a mature woman who resembled one of the children.

Frider gritted her teeth. It was an unpleasant sight no matter when she saw it.

“Huh…? Knight? Are you a knight…?!”

Desperate expectation filled the woman’s eyes as she saw Frider.

“…Yes. I’ve come to rescue you.”

It was a rescue that came too late for them, but Frider had nothing else to say.

“Aaaah…”

The woman wept with relief at the salvation that had finally arrived.

“……Now you come?”

The gaunt woman let out a bitter laugh.

Some might call it ungrateful, but Frider didn’t get angry. It was a common reaction.

Out of every ten people rescued, two or three would react this way.

Rescue always comes a step too late.

They weren’t reacting that way because they weren’t grateful for being saved.

It was just that what they had experienced was that horrific.

Enough to leave indelible wounds on their minds.

Being an adventurer-looking woman, she would know well.

That even if rescued, she would never be able to walk properly or lift anything again.

In the end, it was just an expression of pain, both physical and mental.

Frider wasn’t callous enough to get angry at a patient crying out in pain.

“Yes, even now. What can I do, that’s how things turned out.”

“……”

Frider casually replied and raised her axe to strike the lock on the iron bars.

Sparks flew as the lock broke into two pieces.

Stepping inside the cage, Frider also cut through the women’s handcuffs with her axe.

They were tougher than the lock.

As the chains holding their arms were cut, the staggering women collapsed to the ground.

‘I guess standing is too much for them.’

Frider sighed inwardly.

The adventurer woman stared at her ankles for a while, then lowered her head and gritted her teeth.

“Those bastards…! Those dog-like bastards……!”

Teardrops fell, wetting the floor of the prison.

“If you can’t stand, just wait here for now. I’ll bring people to help you soon. I need to check the other rooms too.”

Frider, looking down at her, then surveyed the others.

The women who had lost their minds were sprawled helplessly on the floor.

They were just breathing, in a miserable state no different from corpses.

Even Frider couldn’t be sure if they would ever regain their senses.

The woman who had crawled to her child held her unresponsive daughter and wept endlessly.

Frider looked at the scene sadly for a while, then headed to another room.

—-

The second room was the one called the breeding pen.

A spacious area about twice the size of the previous room.

The straw-covered floor reeked with a terrible stench.